Stabilization of oily contaminated clay soils using new materials:Micro and macro structural investigation

Abstract

Clay soils have a big potential to become contaminated with the oil derivatives because they cover a vast area of the earth. The oil derivatives diffusion in the soil lead to soil contamination and changes the physical and mechanical properties of the soil specially clay soils. Soil stabilization by using new material is very important for geotechnical engineers in order to improve the engineering properties of the soil. The main subjects of this research are a- to investigate the effect of the cement and epoxy resin mixtures on the stabilization and on the mechanical parameters as well as the microstructural properties of clay soils contaminated with gasoline and kerosene, b- study on the phenomenon of clay concrete development. Practical engineering indexes such as Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS), elastic modulus, toughness, elastic and plastic strains are all obtained during the course of experiments and are used to determine the optimum amount of additives (cement and epoxy resin) to reach a practical stabilization method. Microstructural tests were also conducted on the specimens to study the changes in the nature and texture of the soil. Results obtained indicated that by adding epoxy resin to the contaminated soil specimens, the strength and deformational properties are increased from 100 to 1500 times as that of original soils. Further, the UCS of some stabilized specimens reached 40 MPa which exceeded the strength of normal concrete. It is interesting to note that, in contrast to the normal concrete, the strength and deformational properties of such stabilized specimens (including UCS, toughness and strain at failure) are simultaneously increased which further indicate on suitability and applicability of the current stabilization method. It was also observed that increasing cement additive to the soil has negligible effect on the contaminated soils stabilized by epoxy resin. In addition, the epoxy resin showed a very good and satisfactory workability for the weakest and the most sensitive soils contaminated with oil derivatives.